The FutureTECH show/The presenter’s studio
Waseem Mirza wanted his phone to work longer
Actor and presenter Waseem Mirza was not happy when he realized he would have to change his phone, especially since it was working so well.
Although the hardware worked fine, Samsung ended security updates to the phone in 2020. “I just wish there was a way to squeeze more life out of this old technology. »
“I really thought the lack of (security) updates was pretty stupid,” says Mr Mirza, who bought the phone in 2016.
“Your battery and screen are still working great. You feel like the manufacturer is forcing you to upgrade.
He used his phone to manage his online banking transactions, particularly for his production company. “It was important to me to have the latest critical software updates,” he explains.
Besides the financial cost, there is an environmental cost to upgrading your phone. Around 80% of carbon emissions from mobile phones come from their manufacturing. This is called embodied or embodied carbon.
So from an emissions perspective, the longer phone users can get the latest software to run their phones, the better.
An operating system called /e/OS could have been the answer Mr. Mirza was looking for. This is a free version of Android that extends the life of devices that no longer receive updates, providing a potentially greener alternative to manufacturers' software.
Mr Mirza's old phone is one of more than 200 supported devices, some of which are 10 years old. When support for the Galaxy S7 Edge ends next year due to hardware limitations, /e/OS will have extended the phone's lifespan by another five years.
“We are making /e/OS available for devices that have not been supported for a long time by their manufacturers,” explains Gaël Duval, founder and developer of /e/OS.
“We try to (allow them to) receive all the latest security updates. Big manufacturers install a lot of bloatware on phones, useless things that people don't use. Over time, this slows things down. We slim down the software so that it continues to work efficiently on older devices.
Manufacturers have continued to increase the lifespan of new phones. For this year's Galaxy S24 phones, Samsung has extended support to seven years, which is in line with Google's promise for its Pixel devices. Apple will support the iPhone 16 for at least five years.
“Due to the current (processor) architecture and memory size of these new phones, it is likely that they will remain usable for a very long time, probably well beyond seven years,” says Rik Virginiever, director of operations at /e/OS. .
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Samsung extends software support for its latest phones to seven years
As well as allowing devices to run longer, software can also be made more carbon efficient when running.
Mobile phone apps need to be energy efficient because the phone battery is limited.
But many software programs run on servers located in data centers, where there are no such limitations on power consumption.
“You don't even think about how much electricity you're consuming when you're building server applications, so you don't do anything to optimize it,” Hussain says. “There are virtually no tools to measure it.”
The Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification helps measure the carbon footprint of software and, earlier this year, became a global industry standard. The calculation at its heart includes both the emissions linked to the operation of the software and the embodied carbon of the hardware on which it runs.
The idea is to have a carbon intensity score that software developers can use to track progress as they try to reduce emissions from their software.
The specification was created by the Green Software Foundation, which has more than 60 members including Microsoft, Intel and Google.
“We describe green software as energy- and hardware-efficient software, meaning it uses as few physical resources as possible, resulting in fewer embodied emissions,” explains Asim Hussain, executive director of Green Software. Foundation.
“We also include carbon awareness, which means doing more when electricity is clean and less when it is dirty. »
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Calculating the carbon footprint of software is really difficult, says Asim Hussain
However, developing the score is far from simple.
“Calculating (the SCI) is incredibly difficult,” concedes Mr Hussain. “The problem is the lack of data.”
To help fill this gap, the Green Software Foundation has created a set of templates called the Impact Framework. It takes observations of things you can see, such as what percentage of a server's resources are being used, and turns them into estimates of carbon emissions.
Mr. Hussain's advice to CTOs? “Trust that if you give your teams a performance indicator like SCI, they will know what they need to do to optimize it. You'll probably get it wrong the first time, but be as transparent as possible and get feedback.
To help developers improve the energy efficiency of their software, the ecoCode project compiles a collection of “code smells”. These are clues that the code could perhaps use fewer resources, for example by replacing one instruction with another that does the same work more quickly.
“It’s still an area that’s getting a lot of research,” says Tariq Shaukat. He is the CEO of Sonar, which makes the code analysis software used by the ecoCode project.
“A lot of (code smells) would be too complex code. The second (type) is things that work inefficiently: you update or pull data more frequently than necessary. Another problem is bloating. How can you make your application as simple and streamlined as possible?
Peter Campbell is Director of Green Software at Kainos, an IT services company that creates cloud-based software for clients. The company trained its 500 engineers, product managers and designers through the Green Software Foundation's free short course.
“We thought if we educated internally and externally, it would magically be adopted by all of our teams,” he says.
“It turns out it doesn't work that simply. The culture piece is really difficult, not only to get people to take action, but also to continue to prioritize it. There are so many priorities from our customers that sometimes sustainability is not the most important priority.
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It's difficult to get engineers to prioritize green development, says Peter Campbell
The information and communications technology (ICT) sector is estimated to account for 1.4% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. However, a 2018 study estimated that ICT would account for 14% by 2040 .
There are signs that larger companies are taking the problem more seriously.
Although only 10% of the world's largest companies include software sustainability in their requirements today, this proportion is expected to rise to 30% by 2027, according to Gartner analysts.
Mr Hussain adds that software is much easier to decarbonise than many other sectors, such as aviation. “We should push that button now because we can.”
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